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  • August 12, 2019 at 11:20 am #307671
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    You flew to AZ to settle her there and you frenzied yourself in nyc to settle her there- resolve to never do that again. Let her settle herself.

    Aim not at fixing your relationship with your sister, it is as good as it can be at this time. She needs to continue to contain her anxiety in her communications with you and you need to limit your interactions with her because she triggers you. It takes a lot of time and energy to respond healthily to this kind of triggering and you don’t have that time and energy, this is why limiting get- together times is wise.

    Focus on yourself and your husband, a team of two, your inner circle.

    When you notice this rushing of the brain.. hush it, again and again. As you practice this more and more, prepare for that despair or anger, or whatever other emotions will make themselves known to you, and don’t get alarmed.

    Keep walking your emotional healing path, keep going and pace yourself. No rushing the process.

    anita

    August 12, 2019 at 11:25 am #307673
    Cali Chica
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    I will and shall.  Thank you for this reminder on a Monday.

    I had mentioned I made an appt with a therapist, I decided to stick to the female one, and go solo.

    It is today evening.  I look forward to it for the sake of “going” and starting that process.  But also feel exhausted to share and start from scratch with a new person, as we have spoken about.

    Regardless I am glad I am putting the effort into self care, whatever it may be.  I may start a therapeutic relationship with this therapist, or perhaps not.  Point is,  I am no longer letting anything get in the way of my inner circle – a team of two – and my emotional healing path.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by Cali Chica.
    August 12, 2019 at 11:59 am #307677
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    You are welcome. “Point is, I am no longer letting anything get in the way of my inner circle- a team of two- and my emotional path”- excellent, glad to read this!

    Regarding meeting with the therapist this evening, that will be very interesting. If she only took the time to read your posts on your threads here, she would know so much about you, save a lot of time.

    anita

     

    August 14, 2019 at 4:11 am #307857
    Cali Chica
    Participant

    Dear Anita,
    I hope you are doing well.
    I had my appointment with a therapist on Monday. It went fine. Just as I imagined. The “getting to know you” phase. She mentioned how I was catching her up on my life.

    I noticed how impatient I felt that I had to start over. Starting from the vital wedding time, but tracking back and forth. Of course so much for an hour. I know it would be an ongoing long process for this person to understand me. No fault of hers. No fault of anyone. Just the process. I also know I don’t know the depth of her toolbox.

    I know the ritual of going is something I can see as relaxing in some ways. She lives on the other side of town next to the river. Beautiful serene views and ambience. I arrived 30 mins early and sat out there and relaxed. Let the day wash over me.
    I also know that I won’t always have time for this ritual and may also begin to resent making the time To go regularly.

    So in short I observed many things. None of which as surprising.

    I chose her in part because she is certified in EMDR for trauma therapy. I have ready about this and found it quite interesting. The idea of repressed emotions being released. Therefore I asked if if May be a modality for me in the future. She said it may.

    Then this morning. As I woke up. Rushed but in the sense of “woke up late gotta go.” But not rushed in the mind.
    I noticed how powerful that is.
    To be in a “rushed” or “stressed” scenario – but not allowing your body to become this way. NOT noticing the effects of the adrenaline on the body, instant tension, heart racing, mind not focused, neck and shoulders tensed.

    Sure this is not always possible. But hey. I did it.

    I woke up at 5:45 and had to be out the door at 6:20. In that time I made the bed (yes mini victory something I try to do more). Made myself a smoothie to go (trying not to skip breakfast and feel more irritable and tense during my day as we don’t get lunch break) and took the dog out to relieve himself (he is expertly trained to go in the same place and quickly in the morning). Came back up grabbed my things and out the door. I even had to semi run to the subway. Which I don’t love doing of course. Yet when I came in and sat down (yes found a seat this morning) and collected myself. My shoulders and neck tension was fine. My breathing was fine. Sure I didn’t necessarily want to be on the subway this early heading to work. But that’s besides the point. I thought about your example again – the day you stated that you were sitting and writing, as sedentary as could be, YET you still rushed a few times.

    Rushing is all in the mind.

    So all in all. Therapy or not. You, Anita have taught me to: hush the rush.

    No matter who the psychotherapist. Or EMDR or whatever it is. If I don’t first and foremost start with the primitive domino – the rush – I will get no where. Stop the domino effect by hushing the rush.

    And the thing I realized this morning is that it doesn’t need TIME per se (as this morning I had none) it needs mental space.
    Mental time. Mental real estate.
    Yup- and that’s what I cultivate these days.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by Cali Chica.
    August 14, 2019 at 6:38 am #307863
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    Good mindful practice this morning, a hush the rush practice. I heard of EMDR before and once again googled Wikipedia entry on it. It was developed in the 90s by a Shapiro, has to do with eye movements. Did you ask the therapist you saw how the work will look like (my therapist gave me that document I copied for you, having my name, his diagnoses of me, goals, strategies and so on. Does she produce such a document for her clients (after a few sessions)?

    I went over more of my notes from 2011 yesterday and I want to process them further here with you, thinking it relevant to you now. But before I do, I don’t think I mentioned this to you: part of my therapy homework was to listen to one or more guided meditations by Mark Williams. They are available online and are all about Mindfulness.

    Here is a quote from Meditation 4: Breath and Body: “The deep stillness we seek does not arise because the world is still or the mind is quiet. Stillness is nourished when we allow things to be just as they are for now. In this moment, moment by moment, breath by breath”.

    Quote from Meditation 5: Sounds and Thoughts: “As you sit here, bringing the focus of your attention now to hearing, opening to sounds as they arise from near or far… There is no need to try to control your thoughts in any way, letting them come and go on their own, just as you did with sounds… From time to time you may find that your mind gets caught up in your thinking, no longer observing your thoughts and feelings, but lost inside them. When this happens, congratulate yourself for waking up.. renewing your intention to observe these mental events as they arise, stay awhile and dissolve…”.

    Meditation 6: Exploring Difficulty is about focusing on unpleasant sensations in the body, “to explore them, to see them clearly.. You are not trying to change the sensations, but exploring them with friendly curiosity.. It may be helpful to say to yourself silently: It’s OK to feel this; whatever it is- it’s OK to allow myself to be open to it. Giving these sensations your full attention, breathing with them letting them be… Seeing if it is possible to stay with the awareness of these bodily sensations and your relationship to them, breathing with them, letting them be, allowing them to be just as they are”

    It is best to listen to these in order, and each one repeatedly before moving to the next on another day- this in itself is therapy.

    I liked the affirmations in Meditation 7: Befriending, “when you are ready, bringing kindness and friendship to yourself by silently saying to yourself: May I be safe and free from suffering. May I be as happy and healthy as it is possible for me to be. May I have a ease of being”.

    In my next post to you I want to go over notes I made outside of therapy (not part of homework) in 2011 about mindfulness, paraphrasing those as I integrate those with what I learned recently, years later.

    anita

    August 14, 2019 at 7:00 am #307871
    Cali Chica
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    I did not ask her this question, but I have a feeling she does not produce this sort of document.  I don’t mean to say it is all about degrees, but she is not a PhD, and so perhaps not as academically inclined in that way -versus someone who is.  Or perhaps that’s not true at all.  I have a feeling I won’t be a compliant client to her.  A doctor who is a bad patient – always the case!

    But I give myself the permission to choose, also knowing it takes time to develop therapeutic relationships.

    Speaking of – I tried acupuncture for my muscle tension yesterday.  I felt extremely relaxed and it continued much later after and today.  In fact it felt like a therapy session in a way because – since my muscles were not as tense this morning,  I was able to rush less.  As we both know it is all connected, mind and body.  I can see myself going to acupuncture regularly, not just for the sake of muscle or back pain – but the ritual itself was very relaxing.

    I wonder if it is something you would enjoy or have close access to.  Worth a try perhaps who knows.

    I just looked up Mark Williams meditation, I see them on youtube.  Is this where you listened to them?

    If you had given me this recc just one month ago, I would have wanted to try it, but my brain would not have had the mental space to absorb and appreciate.  It does now.  This is why any modality: formal therapy, acupuncture, massage, meditation videos, yoga, anything – is most effective when we are in the state of mind to reap its benefits.

    I will read these now, and look forward to your next post about the notes, which we  can go over.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by Cali Chica.
    August 14, 2019 at 7:50 am #307877
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    To me, the term “Being” in what follows, means Life. The term “mind” means overthinking and the negative feelings involved in overthinking, another term for this overthinking, overactive mind is “monkey mind”, operating like a monkey in a cage. Each time I use “mind”- I means monkey mind. When I use “observing mind” I am referring to the non-monkey/ evolved mind. Here are then my notes from what I read in 2011, summarized and a bit paraphrased here and there:

    Being is the eternal, ever present, indestructible, invisible one life deep in & beyond all the many forms of life. It is my own deepest self, my permanent nature. I can know it only when my mind is still, when I am present, my attention fully in my body and in the Now.

    Being can be felt but it cannot be cognitively understood.

    Therefore, the greatest obstacle to experiencing this Being is my identification with my mind.

    Not being able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize it because almost everybody is suffering from it, it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise/ mind prevents me from finding that place of inner stillness and therefore, from accessing Being. This mental noise causes fear and suffering.

    The compulsive thinker lives in a state of separateness from Being, separated from oneself, from others, from nature, from Being.

    The thinking brain is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, it becomes very destructive. It is to one’s detriment when the instrument, unsupervised, takes over the person it is meant to serve, and instead it does the person a great disservice, day after day.

    The mind, without awareness, interprets the present in terms of the past. It often imagines things going wrong. The moment I am aware of my thinking (watching/ observing my thinking), my observing mind (and a higher consciousness) become activated.

    Listen/observe/ witness the voice in your head as a witnessing presence: There is the voice- and here I am listening to it.

    When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. Once consciously witnessed, the thought loses its power over you, because you are no longer energizing the mind through the activation of the emotions closely following the thought. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.

    With practice, a sense of stillness and peace will deepen. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.

    The thinking brain is an instrument, a tool. About 80%-90% of most people’s thinking is repetitive, useless, dysfunctional, often negative and therefore harmful. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.

    Enlightenment means you still use your practical thinking mind when needed, mostly for practical purposes, but in a much more focused and effective way than before. You are then free from the involuntary internal dialogue, and there is inner stillness. This is a higher level of evolution.

    Allow an emotion to be without being controlled by it. You are no longer only your emotion; you are the watcher, the observing presence. Make it a habit to ask yourself: what is going on inside me at this moment? Don’t analyze, just watch.

    Often a vicious cycle builds between your thinking and the emotions that are energized by your thinking: they feed each other. Your thoughts energize the emotion, which in turn energizes the thought pattern and so on.

    One of the main tasks of the mind is to fight or remove emotional pain- but it fails. The hardest the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain. The mind can never find the solution because it is itself an intrinsic part of the problem.

    True joy, love or deep inner peace are aspects of Being which has been often obscured by the mind, but not lost or destroyed. When the sky is heavily overcast, the sun hasn’t disappeared. It’s still there on the other side of the clouds.

    Much of human pain is unnecessary. It is self created when the mind runs your life. The mind perceives the timeless Now as threatening. It therefore tries to deny or escape it. The more you are able to accept the Now, the more you are free of pain and suffering. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.

    Observe how the mind labels the present moment, how it judges it, creating pain and unhappiness. Make your present moment your friend, not your enemy. Always work with what is present, with whatever the present moment contains. Accept the present, then act.

    The Pain-Body is your accumulated pain. It is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind. It an be dormant of active. Anything can trigger the dormant pain-body: any thought, sensation, something you hear… Watch out for any sign of unhappiness in yourself, in whatever form. It may be the awakening Pain-Body: irritation, impatience.. Catch it the moment it awakens from its dormant stage: Does it ‘take you over,’ becomes you? Does it maintain itself? Is your thinking and behavior keeping the pain going on and on?”

    You can cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection- you can not cope with the future.

    The mind is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as being constantly under threat. Therefore, it keeps sending the body ongoing messages of being in danger, energizing anxiety. As long as the mind is running your life, you cannot be at ease; you cannot be at peace except for brief intervals when you obtain what you wanted, when a craving has been fulfilled.

    This compulsion to live in the past and future, but not in the Now arises because the past gives you an identity and the future promises salvation.

    Salvation is in the present, not in the future.

    My mind knows only labels, judgments, facts and opinions about me. Only Being knows me and it knows me because it is the One Life in all its  forms. Make it your practice to withdraw attention from past & future when not needed.

    Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Identification with the mind gives it more energy; observation of the mind withdraws energy from it.

    If all your problems, real or perceived  were miraculously removed from you today, but you had not become more present and conscious, you would soon find yourself with a similar set of problems or new problems. You may win $10 million, but it is a skin deep change. You would continue to act out the same conditioned patterns of thoughts & feelings in more luxurious surroundings.

    Narrow your life down to this moment. Allow everything to be, within and without. A life situation needs to either be dealt with or accepted. Decide to no longer create any more pain for yourself. Should a problem arise in the future, your reactions in the future will be clear, intuitive & effective because you habitually live in the Now.

    ‘Ordinary Unconsciousness’ is a state not of acute pain or unhappiness but of an almost continuous low level of unease, discontent, boredom, or nervousness- a kind of background static. It is so much a part of ‘normal’ living. Many people use alcohol, drugs, sex, food, work, television, etc., to remove the basic unease. When this happens, an activity that might otherwise be very enjoyable, if used in moderation, becomes hijacked by a compulsive or addictive quality.

    Make it a habit to monitor your mental state through self observation: ‘Am I at ease at the moment? What kind of thoughts is my mind producing? What do I feel?’ Direct your attention into your body: Is there any tension?

    If you find your here and now intolerable, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally.

    If there something you ‘should’ be doing but are not doing? Get up and do it now or completely accept your inactivity at this moment- either way, there is no conflict, no resistance, no negativity.

    If you tend to worry, ask yourself: what is wrong with this moment (the here and now moment)? You can cope with the Now, but you can not cope with the future. The only thing that is real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. This is all there is.

    Only the present can free you from the past.

    When paying attention to the body, you may feel a combination of sensations and emotions that are hard to label. What matters is not whether you can attach a label to it, but that you can bring the feeling into awareness as much as possible.

    Allow life to live through you. The alternatives are pain and suffering, a greatly restricted flow of life energy, and in many cases physical disease. Pay attention to the silence in between sounds, in between words. As you pay attention to the silence, the dimension of stillness grows within you: Silence without, stillness within.

    My added note this morning: the reason all my problems were not solved after reading, understanding, summarizing and paraphrasing the above, even practicing it back in 2011 was that there was too much pain in that “Pain Body, primarily too much fear. This is why Distress Tolerance Skills such as soothing oneself are necessary to reduce that pain/ fear before this mindfulness practice becomes adequately effective.

    Also, this monkey mind situation is normal, because most people are anxious.. most people were trapped in a distressing childhood before coming out into a distressing adult life, further trapped in situations and places.

    anita

    August 15, 2019 at 8:15 am #308093
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    I will take a break from passing on to you notes from my 2011 therapy folder. Regarding your last post to me: my therapist at the time was not a PhD. His scientific, planned approach to therapy is probably connected to his specialty, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is scientific.

    I never tried acupuncture and don’t intend to try because of the needles involved. As a matter of fact, I don’t feel comfortable with massages either, particularly the deep tissue massage I only heard about.

    The Mark Williams meditations- my therapist sent me the links each time to the meditations, so I never looked for them online, it was provided as part of his homework emails to me following sessions.

    How are you feeling and doing, Cali Chica???

    anita

    August 15, 2019 at 8:33 am #308095
    Cali Chica
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    I am doing well.  I have copy and pasted your last post into a document and going through it piece  by piece.  It is a wealth of information, especially the parts about the pain body.  I will post about it when I am finished, it is incredible!

    It makes sense the needles and deep tissue massage.  These are 2 things I love in fact.

    I feel that the combination of acupuncture, or the act of the self care taking the hour for myself, as well as being more mindful has served me well in the last 2 weeks.

    In addition I have become more of an expert with “disengaging comments.”

    As in ways to effectively communicate when someone is involving you in something that you don’t care to engage in.

    For example the mean lady at work was telling me how she cooks a lot for her husband and it is the way to his heart, and was giving me “advice” on how to do so.  Instead of responding and saying, I cook too etc – I said:

    ‘oh that sounds like a great thing you do!”

    It shut her up – and it preserved my energy.  Who cares if I meant it, and who gives a *** about her cooking.

    It work for people you care about too.

    My mother in law was on the phone the other evening.  And as I have mentioned she isn’t judgey, pressuring, etc.  But yet we can often feel that way because of our own experiences (given my mother).  I was telling her we werent going to make it to this family function in Maryland this weekend.  Well my husband had told her, and then when I got on the phone she mentioned “oh too bad i won’t see you this weekend.”

    This was triggering for me.  And of course you understand why Anita – in that same scenario with my mother there would have been a tsunami of horribleness.

    But still, I did find myself feeling the urge to be defensive, combative.  I sensed that “attack feeling” rise up.  I recognized it.

    I told her how its been hectic for us and we need a weekend to ourselves since we have 3 weddings coming up, and my husband is on call the other weekends.

    She said yes I know, its been a busy summer etc etc. talked about something else.

    then she commented: “yes we are in our 70s and running around every weekend to these things too.”

    They are very social in the community and always have a full social calendar.

    I first took that to make me feel bad, I felt: “wow she is saying that look how old they are and they still manage to muster the energy to attend everything, and we are much younger but opting out.”  But then I thought about it – shes not the type to make a jab like that – and thats not the point.

    What can I say to make myself not emotionally charged? So I said:

    “oh yes, you two have plenty of energy…”

    And that was it Anita – end of convo!

    Just like that – learning the art of disengaging and saying less!

    August 15, 2019 at 9:15 am #308099
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    Excellent work at disengaging! Your mother in law’s comments didn’t read to me at all problematic, no criticism, no attacks, nothing passive aggressive. Yet I understand your triggered distress, completing her sentences with imagine criticism of you.

    I still get triggered this way every day. Someone says something innocent and there it is, the distress. All it used to take was someone looking in my direction and I felt criticized and attacked, or about to.

    anita

    August 15, 2019 at 11:42 am #308115
    Cali Chica
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    thank you! I too realized that her comment was entirely benign, but I honored myself feeling triggered. As I am allowed to feel that way and it makes sense given the circumstances.

    I noticed how it would take energy to have that battle with myself. Cognitive dissonance in a way. One side says don’t be triggered you’re being sensitive, the other says – you have a right to roar. I would then be wasting energy and mental space doing this, dissociating from the conversation at hand, and then frenzied to try to pay attention. A recipe for disaster and distress.

    Instead I heard the comment. I noted the feeling inside me. A small fire burning a bit of tension. I recognized it – as I feel that it’s so common to feel this way, yet so easy to overlook and recognize. It’s what you say – it’s that in the moment recognition and pausing.

    So I did.

    I listened before speaking.

    Heres the thing her comment was NOT inflammatory. So it was a great place to start. Yet so many peoples are. So if I practice this in a safe scenario with good people. It will be more fluid to do so with difficult people.

    Let’s day for example she did mean it as a jab – something like : “oh you young people always opting out, look at us elderly always keeping our word and making it to everything.”

    well someone who said that would be quite rude and instigating.

    Yet,  my response would still be perfect.

    “Oh my yes, you do have tons of energy!”

    end of story. No opening of the devils fire.

    August 15, 2019 at 1:43 pm #308127
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    I was on an errand and want to read and reply to you when I am focused, later today or tomorrow morning.

    anita

    August 15, 2019 at 2:39 pm #308129
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    “I honored myself feeling triggered. As I am allowed to feel that way and it makes sense given the circumstance”- you are allowed to feel any which way at any time, at any circumstance even if it doesn’t make sense to you or to anyone else.

    Particularly, you are allowed to feel angry at any time, at anyone, at any circumstance, regardless of it making sense or not.

    “I noticed how it would take energy to have that battle with myself”- war is very tiring. Imagine a time when you are no longer at war with yourself, but at peace. How peaceful that would be.

    “One side says don’t be triggered”- as long as one side is at war with you for having been triggered, you will continue to be triggered. To change you need peace, not war. Ongoing criticism is war.

    “you have a right to roar”- you must roar-you need to. But roar I a way that will not trigger that war- in a way you know is just and right.

    “oh my yes, you do have tons of energy!” is a nice little roar. Your MIL said something and you are not sure if it is an innocent remark or a jab- you roar the above, or something similar and later, when you are calm, think: was it a jab? (You can ask me for an objective opinion)- if you figured it was probably not a jab, then your roar did no harm. If the mean lady at work made a comment and you are not sure, same thing, same roar. Later you figure it was a jab, well, your roar was good enough.

    Back to anger: when you feel anger at who you consider a good person, be it your MIL or your husband- say to yourself: it is okay for me to feel anger at anyone, at anytime, no matter if it makes sense or not. I am not a bad person for feeling angry. Everyone feels angry, even my husband and his mother!

    When you feel angry and you are not sure if an offense was committed or you imagined it because of triggers from childhood- do one of those neutral roars, like the one I quoted, it will do good in either case. Later, when calm you can think about whether it was an offense, a jab, or not.

    anita

    August 15, 2019 at 6:03 pm #308151
    Cali Chica
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    Today evening I realized the true need for solitude. I was watching a television show and one of the characters stated, solitude is replenishment for the soul. It caught me off guard as the show is not particularly deep, but it is exactly right. I’m learning a lot of things recently. And of course, we are on this journey together in many ways, and over the last month, we have had the most organized learning and healing in years.

    Solitude is interesting. My mother voice is not the first thing that comes to mind her every second anymore. Yet of course if I think about something hard enough it will arise. Solitude was intertwined with aloneness which was intertwined with loneliness. In my entire life, the concept of being lonely was first in for most over everything. The concept of why would you spend time alone if you could be with others. This was extremely prevalent in my 20s where I truly adopted that social role.

    I noticed today that I had an evening to myself. My husband went out to a work dinner. I got home relatively early and had already gone to yoga in the morning. Therefore, I had at least six hours ahead of me until now. Wow so much time! There were so many options of things to do. My sister was going to a concert today that I really liked, but I opted out. I live in New York City there’s endless opportunities of things to do. I did none of them.

    The funny thing is in the past I would feel like, look how tired and depressed I am I just want to stay in. This wasn’t the case. I felt pretty great today in fact, full of energy, not too much body pain. But I still opted to stay in. It taught me something. I made the choice to do so. It wasn’t because I had no other option, it wasn’t because it was a negative connotation and it was forced.

    I am an adult and I have the power to choose. I choose how to replenish my soul these days. And that’s the thing. If Like earlier I learned some key phrases and words to utilize so that I can disengage from conversations and hold onto my vital energy that is replenishing.  If I choose to spend an evening of solitude that is replenishing. If I choose to eat certain foods versus others, that is replenishing. Moral of the story, I am only learning recently at this stage how much power and control I can truly have over myself. I am truly not out of control. Yes there are things in my life that may be out of control just like everyone else’s. There might be things about our health our bodies that may not be in our control. But that’s not really the daily point. The way we choose to live our life is in our own control.

    It is like a new language to me, to make healthy choices, stick to them, and see the results. It sounds like somebody who went to rehab or AAA, seeing the results of a month of good habits and comparing them to the past.  It’s all within the same, breaking out of negative patterns.

    Beauty of it is that I didn’t take much. It all revolved around doing less. You mentioned earlier and I will repeat it again, as it is really important to me: that if others around me don’t notice a change, I am not doing it enough, in regards to the social role. I have seamlessly exited out of interactions over this month, whether they be in person or via text or phone. I have a few times ignored phone calls without any frenzied message back, simply let them go to voicemail. I looked at my phone while this was happening and I did not feel like a bad person, or guilty. I am a busy adult and I don’t have time right now. It’s that simple. My entire life I have observed others acting this way feeling that they were able to do this and I wasn’t. But in fact it’s quite simple, it’s allowing yourself to have power over your actions, not something else. It is important for me to also note that I realize so much about the inner circle. Nobody is sitting around waiting for me to be involved in their life, it was entirely self-induced all of my roles and responsibility. People flow into and out of her life in varying degrees based on what is going on in their own life, as well as their own needs. That is not selfish it is just life, so I see that now that I pay attention to my own needs I can also throw in an out as I please. I’ve never faltered other people for doing so, so I surely should not fault myself.

    I’ve also been doing a better job at observing the behavior of others. No I’m not saying I’m walking out into the world acting like a psychologist and judging in diagnosing everyone. But I’m taking a very much more observing look at the behavior of someone else before I jump in into reaction Or responsive mode. I noticed that with my mother I never had the chance to do that. Well of course, it wasn’t like if I sat and actually thought about her for longer than a few minutes her needs were changed, she was orderly and unimaginably in sane and difficult.

    No I know everyone is not like my mother, but call moderation is necessary. Like my example with the cousin in London, it is easy to jump into the lap of conversations when I don’t take the time to see what and how I should trust and believe.

    No one is in need of urgent help  -Well when I say no and I mean not most normal people in my life, perhaps a patient in front of me

    I noticed that I quickly believe people, if somebody is going on and on about how terrible the places, I don’t always questioned it. It’s like how I took my mothers opinion to be gold. I don’t exactly do that with other people, but I noticed that I don’t allow my observation to LEAD.

    I did today,  there is a lady at work, not the lady I talk about another one, who is extremely nice but can easily turn into Dramatic and complaining sort of person. She is also a physician that I work with. I didn’t work with her today, but in the five minutes that I saw her all she did was complain about their new electronics system.

    I took a mental step back and I observe this woman. She looked slightly like in a daze. If I had left that conversation entirely and went over to the bathroom she would have continued to talk. In fact she was entirely having a conversation with herself. That was the whole point, I just happened to be there, she was talking to her self. Now here’s the thing, in those scenarios I am off and right empathetic and compassionate, I give my energy to help the person, to make them feel better. I realize that would have been a waste in the scenario, this person is simply venting, and talking to herself

    Talked a lot about absorbing the energy of others, feeling immersed in them. And I know exactly why I, of course there is the background of the mother trauma, but on a simplistic daily basis, I’ve become involved in the conversations of others way too quickly and become entrenched in what they are saying without giving myself the time to observe and wonder is this something I want to be involved in or not? Can I trust with this person is saying enough to want to engage in it?

    Could be anyone. I have a friend who is recently divorced and now unemployed, as you can imagine her life is pretty messy right now. I no longer offer her regular advice for comfort. Yet today she asked me some questions about an interview she was going on. She appeared even though it was on text, extremely friends either not all over the place. Because of that, I too felt the need to answer in a frenzied sporadic way as well. But I stopped, I thought to myself, she’s a little bit of the mass and all over the place, she has a lot of time on her hands right now Tends to reach out to people in spurts whenever she has different thoughts. That doesn’t work for me, I am cool calm and study, a mature adult that is focusing on her own healing and inner circle. I don’t engage in random frenzied behavior, well I try not to.

    I responded to her, I am at work and so I can’t really chat, if you have some questions that you would like me to help you with email me and I’ll check them out tomorrow. She was gracious and stopped sending me messages

    The past I would have felt that this was rude. But I realize, I could be equally helpful to her in this regard, it’s just that I am giving her the boundaries of how I would like to be contacted in regards to formal help. I can’t sit there and text to you interview tips while I am at work.  I Would love to help her and she is a dear friend, it’s just that I will do it in a way if in the future, that is suitable for me and does not cause me any distress. But for now – truly I am sticking to helping myself. She understands this – as she didn’t email or ask any more questions. She simply went on to send me some articles she thinks I would like.

    Your test to be taken out, to be assertive is to say what you need, and not get resentful by not saying what you need and expecting people to understand. It Feels powerful to be assertive, if feels mature, it feels like a grounded adult.

     

    August 15, 2019 at 6:37 pm #308155
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    I read just a bit and am looking forward to read all & reply tomorrow morning. It is 9:40 pm your time, maybe your husband is home soon from his work dinner, hope you sleep well, rest best you can into the night.

    anita

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